New museum for Florida art rising

It still takes a leap of imagination to see the $14 million museum that will house the world’s most extensive collection of Florida art.

By Eileen Zaffiro-Keaneileen.zaffiro-kean@news-jrnl.com

DAYTONA BEACH — Standing in the middle of the dusty construction site, it still takes a leap of imagination to see the $14 million museum that will house the world’s most extensive collection of Florida art.Steel rods stick out of the concrete block walls, which are only halfway up to their final destination of 30 feet. The floor is a bare concrete slab sprinkled with sand, planks of raw wood and the occasional shiny silver nail.The executive director of the Museum of Arts & Sciences, which will own and run the new Cici and Hyatt Brown Museum of Art, can already see what the future will bring to the 5-acre clearing framed by a thick patch of woods and bustling Nova Road.“At night this will be a beacon with light glowing out of hidden windows in the lattice,” Andrew Sandall said recently as he toured the site on the north end of his property. “There will be a ceremonial staircase rising up to the mezzanine.”The architect on the project, Chris Whitney with the Orlando firm RLF, was glimpsing the future, too.“I can see some amazing events in this space,” Whitney said as he strolled beside Sandall.The public won’t be sauntering through the 27,000-square-foot building until the spring of 2015. While the construction that started in May is on pace to wrap up by next fall, it will take another six months or so to set up an array of computerized controls, install a high-tech lighting system, get the proper temperature and humidity to hold steady, and move in the collection of more than 2,600 oils and watercolors that will be rotated between the seven galleries and a storage room.The museum will salute the Florida cracker architectural style and include a 50-foot peak in the main gallery, as well as meticulous landscaping around the building and retention ponds that will be dominated by plants indigenous to Florida.The grand opening will cap a 20-year journey for Cici and Hyatt Brown, who donated the paintings along with $13 million for construction and another $2 million for what’s hoped to become an $8 million operations and maintenance endowment. Hyatt Brown is board chairman of Daytona Beach-based Brown & Brown insurance agencies and an honorary trustee for the museum. Cici Brown is a member of the museum’s Board of Trustees and a past volunteer there.The Browns started in the mid-1990s with the purchase of an 1839 painting of the gates of St. Augustine with no plan to amass so many other works – some of which are the only visual records of things in Florida that disappeared before photography was developed. They decided several years ago to donate the multi-million-dollar collection, but found themselves on another winding road as they tried to find the right property for a new museum. Eventually, they settled on the site that’s just north of the Museum of Arts & Sciences.“It is exciting to see the walls going up,” said Cici Brown. “It feels really good, but I’m not jumping up and down because I know we’ve got a long way to go.”Brown said she’s very happy with the way things are going, and her main concern is that everything is done well, not quickly.“It’s fun. We’re having a good time,” she said. “We’ll be patient.”Sandall is also glad to see everything is on track with the one-story, steel-frame building – one of three projects he’s currently juggling. He’s getting ready to move on construction of a 6,000-square-foot planetarium that will be located in front of the Museum of Arts & Sciences and open in a year.He plans to start next spring on rebuilding the low-lying west wing of the museum, a project spurred by flooding four years ago. The new 15,000-square-foot wing, which will be raised to the same elevation as the rest of the museum, should be complete by July 2015.

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